March 25, 2013

The Cheats vs The Morons

I have to admit that I get a great deal of deliciously perverse pleasure from reading reports that online ad hustlers are picking the pockets of marketing morons and their clueless but oh-so-fashionable agencies.

Apparently there's a lot of hanky-panky going on in the "murky" world of online ad exchanges. An article in Adweek last week had this to say...

"Indeed, while the Web has never been short of tricksters...a new breed of cheat is fast becoming a plague in the
exchange world: the ghost publisher...very little of these sites'
audiences are real people. Yet big name advertisers are spending
millions trying to reach engaged users on these properties."

How wonderfully delicious is that? Here are some examples they give:

There is a site called Toothbrushing.net. Sounds fascinating doesn't it? It's part of a group that also includes BabyPowder.net. No, I'm not kidding.

According to Adweek, these sites "typically offer 20 million to 25 million impressions via ad exchanges." Yeah, sounds about right to me. Who wouldn't want to read about tooth brushing or baby powder? But that doesn't stop dimwit advertisers like Mercedes and JetBlue from winding up on these sites.

Adweek quotes one online buyer.

"These sites have hundreds of millions of bogus impressions, and those
illegitimate sites are regularly in the top 10 by volume for major
SSP's,"

Another example they give is a company called Alphabird:

"Alphabird's properties are
consistently among the top suppliers of inventory within exchanges and
SSPs...according to multiple sources, a large
number of Alphabird's sites are rife with traffic produced by bots... In fact, among the Alphabird sites frequented by bots rather
than people, 75 percent of the audience is overlaps. In other words, a
huge proportion of the audience for sportsnewsstories.com also visits
fashionfantastica.com."

Yup. I know the first thing I do after reading football news is click around to get some fashion updates. Major advertisers on Alphabird sites include Budget, BMW, Virgin, JetBlue, and Pillsbury.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to admit here that I don't know a damn thing about ad exchanges, bogus or otherwise. I'm just taking Adweek's word for all this. As for the sites in question, they claim that they are not the source of all the phony traffic and, in fact, they are the victims here. Color me officially skeptical.

Either way, it is very satisfying to meditate on the knowledge that someone is screwing the gullible chuckleheads who, driven by agency nitwits, dive willy-nilly into the hideous joke that is online advertising.

Another great post - thankyou. Will those of us taking a contrarian view ever achieved our deserved fame & fortune or will those only go to those plying the received wisdom of current digital advertising. I fear that us contrarians might only achieve recognition long after we are gone, like some of the great composers!

I remember the good 'ol days when the success (or failure) of marketing departments was tied directly to increases sales and profit numbers, not to numbers of impressions or engaged audiences. It's almost as if the agencies and marketing heads are in cahoots, covering each other's ass while avoiding accountability and weaving a tangled web of bullshit (Wow, I must be one of those old people Ad Contrarian was talking about the other day).

And just this morning, I was reading about Cassandra, who was gifted with prophecy by Apollo, but because she resisted his amorous advances, was cursed to never be believed. "There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

You're so cool! I don't believe I have read through a single thing like this before.So nice to discover somebody with unique thoughts on this issue.Really.. thanks for starting this up. This website is one thing that is needed on the web, someone with some originality!

"Caustic Yet Truthful"

"The Most provocative Man In Advertising"

"Savage Critiques Of Digital Hype"

"Fabulously Irreverent"

CONTACT BOB

Over 60,000 people have watched Bob's talk at Advertising week, Europe

You Are Caller Number...

Click Image

Ad Contrarian Says:

"Creative people make the ads. Everyone else makes the arrangements."

"Delusional thinking isn't just acceptable in marketing today -- it's mandatory.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business is about sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."